Oscar Nominations Enlighten the World

This year's Oscar nominations for live action short films provide a view of France, Denmark, Hungary, Spain, and Switzerland that is both particular to those countries and inspiring to countries throughout the world.

In Ennemis Interieurs (Enemies Within) and Silent Nights we see French concern for residents from Algeria who might be terrorists and a man from Ghana who finds in Denmark abuse from local and Arab neighbors rather than the income he expected to send to his family back in Africa. In both cases disillusioned men do things they never intended, and we wonder if their new countries could have acted differently to prevent these outcomes.

Sing from Hungary won the Oscar in this category on February 26, 2017. This film tells the story of a friendly elementary school girl with a heart and a new girl who is told by the chorus director to just mime the words to songs because she doesn't have a good voice. By convincing all the children in the chorus to mime the words to every song at a competition, the two clever girls undermine the director who they consider unfair. Children everywhere in the world could benefit from seeing how to treat new kids in their schools and how they can work together to right an injustice.          

Spain's Timecode gives hope to everyone who has ever had a boring job. After his shift as a security guard who watches the cameras that keep an eye on a garage parking lot, he uses the whole garage as a dance floor to practice his moves. The woman who takes over after him sees his performance and decides to do her own routine for the cameras. After the male security guard sees her dancing, they join up for a duet that the manager sees when he is introducing a new guard to the job. The film ends with the new employee telling the manager, "I don't know how to dance."

A woman's daily gesture of waving a Swiss flag at a passing TGV train before she rides her bicycle to her pastry shop leads to an exchange of messages and gifts of cheese between the woman and the train's engineer in  La Femme et le TGV. You never know where simple gestures might lead.